'We are looking at increasing our presence in the 5 states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan and Gujarat.'

Founded in March, 2016, Mumbai-based Trringo is a farm equipment rental business. It aims to bring the sharing economy to rural India by creating a large inventory of farm equipments on rent. Farmers can place order for tractors and implements through a toll free number or through the app. The digital backend finds the nearest tractor and passes order to the driver. The driver arrives at the location and completes the work and charges on an hourly basis.

BW Disrupt interacts with Arvind Kumar, CEO, Trringo and spoke to him

Unique Key Points

Today Trringo is one of the few companies in this rural digitization space looking to bring relevant digital applications to the farmers. We are making use of digitization to completely change the current practices of mechanization. Through Mahindra's expertise in mechanization, we are bringing high end implements to farmers on a sharing basis, hence reducing their cost of ownership. In Fact we are the first to make this service professional with timely availability, trained drivers and high quality service.

Differentiation Factors

While most competitors are either providing only a software solution or only a hardware solution. With our parent company's backing, we are able to give a unique experience to the farmers in terms of high end equipment and tractors along with a digital backend. Our huge on ground presence through Mahindra & Swaraj is helping us create assets and scale up faster than our competition.

Funding and Revenue Generation

We are internally funded by Mahindra. Our monetization model is on a commission basis with the service providers.

Challenges Faced

Educating the farmers, as well as the suppliers about the business is a challenge since they have not been exposed to concepts like Uber, Ola which are otherwise common in urban India. We are taking time to explain this whole business and the value they get out of it, and enable a smoother and easier transition to adopt this new practice.

Traction Numbers

Till date 7,200 hours of work has been done. Today there are 33 hubs operational in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat and around 6,000 farmers have been served.

Expansion

We have aggressive expansion plans for this year. We are looking at increasing our presence in the 5 states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Market Size

Experts estimate that the informal farm equipment rental market can be pegged at roughly Rs 15,000 crores. This is at an estimated 35% farm mechanization level in India. The opportunity exists both in organizing this market, as well as expanding services to the non-mechanized farms.